The Islamic State’s branch in Egypt has escalated its long-simmering conflict with Hamas, calling on its followers to attack the Gaza-based Palestinian group in a 22-minute video that also featured the brutal execution of an alleged Hamas collaborator.
In a video released Wednesday, ISIS in Sinai Province slammed Hamas for cracking down on Islamic militants in Gaza and for pursuing better relations with Egypt and the Palestinian Authority. ISIS considers both governments to be apostates from Islam that are too accommodating of Jews, Christians and Shia Muslim minorities.
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“Never surrender to them. Use explosives, silenced pistols, and sticky bombs. Bomb their courts and their security locations, for these are the pillars of tyranny that prop up its throne,” says the narrator of the video, according to a translation by SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors extremist websites.
Though it is considered a terrorist group by the U.S. and Israel, Hamas finds itself on the same side as Washington-supported governments in the battle against ISIS. Over the past year, Hamas has been purging ISIS supporters from Gaza and tightening the Sinai border in order to help Egypt fight the Sinai Province affiliate.
Hamas’ cooperation with the Egyptian government now puts it in the crosshairs of Sinai Province, which had carried out most of its previous attacks against Coptic Christians and Egyptian security forces.
The Sinai Province video shows several militants standing behind a kneeling, jumpsuit-clad prisoner, who the ISIS fighters say smuggled weapons to Hamas from the Sinai peninsula.
After the video narrator denounces Hamas for “following in the footsteps of the disbelieving West,” a Sinai Province militant executes the prisoner with a pistol shot to the head. The shooter has been identified in local news reports as Muhammad al-Dajani, a former member of Hamas’s military branch in Gaza.
In addition to railing against Hamas’ cooperation with Western-backed regimes, the Sinai Province militants in the video slam the group for fighting only Jews in Israel. Hamas needs to hate Jews everywhere for their “corrupt” creed, the militants say, according to Times of Israel correspondent Dov Lieber.
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